Hello- Intro from an Aquaculture B.S Student! AMA

[TropicalAquaculture7]

I've been watching the videos since my first tank in seventh grade and I decided to follow it through and study fisheries and aquaculture in college. I can say after a lot of classes I had to take that Cory knows his shit lol. We have a coldwater trout hatchery and it is pretty neat but I have an interest and focus on warm-water species/outdoor fisheries/ lake management and have a personal interest in the local/native and tropical side of RAS intensive aquaculture aka fishkeeping but in field terminology.

Id love to try and answer and questions about the field if anyone curious

[Fish Folk]

On 12/12/2023 at 3:45 PM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

Id love to try and answer and questions about the field if anyone curious

I had to look up RAS to begin getting a grip. It would be neat to learn more!

I have been working with emersed plant growth in various aquaponics set ups to filter nitrate and cut down minerals.

If you’re up for explaining what you’re learning, others would appreciate it ! 

[TropicalAquaculture7]

On 12/12/2023 at 3:53 PM, Fish Folk said:

I had to look up RAS to begin getting a grip. It would be neat to learn more!

I have been working with emersed plant growth in various aquaponics set ups to filter nitrate and cut down minerals.

If you’re up for explaining what you’re learning, others would appreciate it ! 

Yea for sure. We do have 2 aquaponic setups here, one is based on tilapia and they are in a long rectangular fiberglass container, with a long 3ish inch-deep tray the same size above it. Sitting in that tray are large foam sections with holes evenly spaced to put the little plants in the root baskets. We use an airlift to just pump the tilapia tank water up into the tray above, and it floats the plants in the foam sections up so that their roots get water. The other is a more traditional plant-first focused setup where wastewater is pumped over to the greenhouse from either the tilapia or coldwater hatchery, and they do add some additional nutrients because it lacks some needed for flowering plants but they also grow stuff like lettuce and kale with the straight effluent. I did a small project where I measured the nitrite and nitrate levels in our tilapia tank when the aquaponics was set up to try and see if you would see nutrient pull but for how dirty those things get and the small size of the aquaponic setup vrs water volume of the tank I didn't see a difference.

Something I want to do in the future is modify a fluidized bed filter style sump, and add another equally sized chamber to the biobeds, and round the corners so that I can attempt to grow some sort of Ceratophyllum sp in a rotating alive tumbleweed and put a light over it and just remove some plant biomass when it starts to overgrown to pull some more nutrients in my tank.- but I haven't tested that yet (Spring semester)

[TropicalAquaculture7]

The type of stuff we learn is both a fisheries biology side of internal anatomy life history habitats limnology, the field side where we do different collection survey techniques and data processing, small pond management, and classes on environmental laws and policy regulations. In aquaculture we do more of the engineering and primary principals/basics then into the math like growth rate bio media needed, feed rate and expected growth, egg rearing-fry-adult, math for pump friction and flow rates alarm systems, and automation, but IMO we focus way too much on coldwater trout and don't do as much cool water fish out outdoor grows focus let alone stuff  on aquariums or aquarium trade markets. We do have a tropical room but it's small with 3 cichlid racks, and 2 3x125 gal racks and they have guppies and lobster. 

[Fish Folk]

On 12/12/2023 at 4:50 PM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

The type of stuff we learn is both a fisheries biology side of internal anatomy life history habitats limnology, the field side where we do different collection survey techniques and data processing, small pond management, and classes on environmental laws and policy regulations. In aquaculture we do more of the engineering and primary principals/basics then into the math like growth rate bio media needed, feed rate and expected growth, egg rearing-fry-adult, math for pump friction and flow rates alarm systems, and automation, but IMO we focus way too much on coldwater trout and don't do as much cool water fish out outdoor grows focus let alone stuff  on aquariums or aquarium trade markets. We do have a tropical room but it's small with 3 cichlid racks, and 2 3x125 gal racks and they have guppies and lobster. 

Have you visited Conservation Fisheries in Knoxville, TN? We went last March. Amazing place!

[TropicalAquaculture7]

Havent been out of my state much, but yea I looked at the website, super cool that they work with usfws, id hope they can apply and get some form of grants!

[Fish Folk]

On 12/12/2023 at 5:29 PM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

Havent been out of my state much, but yea I looked at the website, super cool that they work with usfws, id hope they can apply and get some form of grants!

I think that they get Federal grants

[TropicalAquaculture7]

On 12/12/2023 at 3:53 PM, Fish Folk said:

I had to look up RAS to begin getting a grip. It would be neat to learn more!

I have been working with emersed plant growth in various aquaponics set ups to filter nitrate and cut down minerals.

If you’re up for explaining what you’re learning, others would appreciate it ! 

I was able to get an old friend's capstone project she did in the tilapia room with aquaponics and a pic of another aquaponic project that is displayed in a hallway. Without being harsh...we have a very high acceptance rate so these projects aren't perfect but they could give you some helpful insight- my tip would be to look more into their literature cited as those papers are legit legit and also related to the subject. Honestly utilizing sites that search peer-reviewed articles in general are super slept on for even generalist knowledge especially in the aquarium hobby if you know how/where to search for em and how to read them.

 

Had to SS and break this up because I couldn't get it to not go thru the schools firewall with login.

 

 

[TropicalAquaculture7]

On 12/13/2023 at 9:40 PM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

I was able to get an old friend's capstone project she did in the tilapia room with aquaponics and a pic of another aquaponic project that is displayed in a hallway. Without being harsh...we have a very high acceptance rate so these projects aren't perfect but they could give you some helpful insight- my tip would be to look more into their literature cited as those papers are legit legit and also related to the subject. Honestly utilizing sites that search peer-reviewed articles in general are super slept on for even generalist knowledge especially in the aquarium hobby if you know how/where to search for em and how to read them.

 

Had to SS and break this up because I couldn't get it to not go thru the schools firewall with login.

 

 

Honestly only just read the larger one that's broken up... like I said high acceptance rate and I just found out that plant science majors here have much looser research requirements and hypotheses than we fish kids do- we need a direct hypo test and need to run statistical analysis off the data we collect. I also found out she never included any of my damm data but I got my credits so don't care. (I measured TAN, Ammonia, and nitrite nitrate weekly for the semester-ish and plotted it out to see if there would be a drop during different stages of plant growth)- mentioned it before but it was this specific study; I emailed her and she sent me it. Hope it helps in some ways though.

If you want to try looking up some research papers https://doaj.org/ is pretty good and free sure there are others but we get recommended this one, I couldn't find anything under aquaponics though- but there are a bunch of others- check https://www.scribendi.com/academy/articles/free_online_journal_and_research_databases.en.html 

Ill figure out how to reply to small bits eventually lol

[nabokovfan87]

On 12/13/2023 at 7:12 PM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

Ill figure out how to reply to small bits eventually lol

Highlight the text, then it'll pop up a box to quote it. 

Welcome to the forums, extremely interesting stuff!

When you talk about aquaponics, one of the big things I would imagine is chemical use, what is allowed, etc. for anything that is designed for human consumption.  A lot of people love the idea of adding in some plants to the top of a tank or using it to go from a tank towards tank+hydroponics style setup.  Do you have any insight on aquarium stuff we use all the time and what is safe to use?

[TropicalAquaculture7]

On 12/14/2023 at 2:54 AM, nabokovfan87 said:

When you talk about aquaponics, one of the big things I would imagine is chemical use, what is allowed, etc. for anything that is designed for human consumption.  A lot of people love the idea of adding in some plants to the top of a tank or using it to go from a tank towards tank+hydroponics style setup.  Do you have any insight on aquarium stuff we use all the time and what is safe to use?

As far as selling the fish for food, you can only legally use MS-222 as an anesthetic to knock them out (Did a project this v clove oil- clove oils just as good something something big monopoly of a distribution company with the only FDA approval so they price it insanely high w no competition) to weigh/measure then they need to wait 20ish days before you can sell them. 

FDA has an approved medicinal treatment list for aquaculture and I'd imagine aquaponics too- they should follow the same regs as commercial greenhouses. 

Adding in a hydroponic element is always good for a tank. An easy way many could start is by adding spare HOB filters to a side and just emptying them and growing plants out of that container. The next step up would be a custom HOB tray the length of the tank for something relatively quick and still very much aesthetic- think paludarium builds but integrates aquaponics. Anything that grows fast will work, emergent I would go with Carex sp- or anything found in wetlands as those plants are hydrophytes and are already used to submerged conditions

I would use fertilizer meant for tanks if you want additional nuts to focus more on the aquaponics growth side- terrestrial fert may have copper so if you have inverts....you won't soon lol.

If you're focusing on using aquaponics to just clean the water, go for the fastest biomass growth rates of non-rooted plants- you want to pull from what dissolved in the water column not within the substrate for submerged growth plants- ex hornwort/coontail over Valsneria, emergent the roots are submerged anyway. blocking off a small area and doing water lettuce in a corner of the tank You can try making a settling basin and having the roots in that area to concentrate nutes- but that would be a fairly large size setup.

You should be ok to even eat the aquaponic production if desired- those plants may be less space-efficient though and pull less TAN but that's up to personal discretion of the goals of the aquaponic system. Crop fields are fertilized with animal waste anyway so I can't imagine it would be different unless you do a form of medicinal treatment in the tank- then look at those ingredients and pull judgment.

As far as safe to use for construction, plants are much hardier than fish overall so if it's good for the fish the plants will take it. Just watch Copper if you have shrimp and want to dose additional nutes. Materials to build any form of aquaponic systems should follow aquarium standards as they will all be connected- safe PVC glue/primer, glass/acrylic, and most plastics are fine- ABS/ PLA, etc.

[Guppysnail]

On 12/14/2023 at 10:40 AM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

emergent I would go with Carex sp- or anything found in wetlands

I work with a wide variety of emergents. Usually selecting any house plant that tolerates wet feet. 
I’m unfamiliar with the Carex or any wetland plants. Would you be able to provide some more specific names.

Most of my Dracaena sanderiana has reach it life expectancy or at least is now out of its major growth and nitrate consumption phase it seems. I’m looking to replace it.

Realestate in hobs(flowing planters 🤣) and planters is non existent so I need something / several somethings I can plug in the holes to just dangle roots in water that is a nitrate hog and fast growing or it will get shaded out by other plants.

I have many types I can take cuttings from but love to try new things  

Thanks in advance for your help.  The unique fields many forum members come from always excites me as opportunities to expand my hobby.  Welcome aboard  

Gere are just a few of my tanks so you see what I mean about realestate, shading  and end of life  

 

[TropicalAquaculture7]

On 12/14/2023 at 11:29 AM, Guppysnail said:

I work with a wide variety of emergents. Usually selecting any house plant that tolerates wet feet. 
I’m unfamiliar with the Carex or any wetland plants. Would you be able to provide some more specific names.

Most of my Dracaena sanderiana has reach it life expectancy or at least is now out of its major growth and nitrate consumption phase it seems. I’m looking to replace it.

Realestate in hobs(flowing planters 🤣) and planters is non existent so I need something / several somethings I can plug in the holes to just dangle roots in water that is a nitrate hog and fast growing or it will get shaded out by other plants.

I have many types I can take cuttings from but love to try new things  

Thanks in advance for your help.  The unique fields many forum members come from always excites me as opportunities to expand my hobby.  Welcome aboard  

Gere are just a few of my tanks so you see what I mean about realestate, shading  and end of life  

 

 

 

Tanks look sweet, definitely maximising space but I like the aesthetics of them too.

Carex sp are just most grassland species, I mentioned them because they grow pretty fast and have relatively large root systems for their size; that way you can just reseed and start again when they reach full size since they pull the most nutrients when they are actively growing.

 

expressly in your case since you have so much vertical head I would suggest tall narrow plants like grasses/sedges/rushes since you can just physically pack more biomass  in vertically- kinda like these-

I haven't looked into grass species more tolerant to tropical tank temperatures, I'm more with cyprinids so not in that temperature range but others gotta be at least a couple to make work.

Also, I think it's a pretty cool aesthetic as well, but yours also looks good.

[Odd Duck]

@Guppysnail, you just need to put a tank in front of a west facing window.  I had to hack off the tallest of my lucky bamboo a few weeks ago, it was all falling over.  This pic is from a couple weeks farther back when it was only starting to fall over.  It will get to just barely touch the ceiling before it falls.  This is the second time I’ve had to cut them down.

 

Ignore any ugly leaves and algae.  😆 

[Schuyler]

I heard somewhere that nitrates are less toxic in high pH water. Have you heard this? Can you explain why at a chem/biology 101 level of understanding?

[TropicalAquaculture7]

Spoiler

 

Yes that is 100% true, at one point I could tell you exactly why but water chem was last year lol and Im too burn out from finals rn to go back through lecture notes and re up myself on the topic. For us its only a big deal when we need to adjust pH in tilapia systems and we do it bit by bit and monitor with YSI and physically running samples. Ill add a link to another form I found and will stand behind what he is saying as it is basically what we did in water chem and lines up to my knoledge on the subject, hes a moderator in another aquarium form and I dont have to type it all out lol.

https://skfaquatics.com/forum/forums/topic/14848-understanding-toxicity-impacts-between-ph-level-and-ammonia/

Hope it helps!

[nabokovfan87]

 

[TropicalAquaculture7]

Intresting, I wonder if biochar is more effective than pure actuvated charcoal of if its more cost efficient. Microbubles and aeration through powerheads is always cheaper than direct injection of gasses

[Shadow]

This might be my favorite introduction thread I have read as of yet. Welcome to the forum!! 

[mitchstevens]

On 12/14/2023 at 4:40 AM, TropicalAquaculture7 said:

I was able to get an old friend's capstone project she did in the tilapia room with aquaponics and a pic of another aquaponic project that is displayed in a hallway. Without being harsh...we have a very high acceptance rate so these projects aren't perfect but they could give you some helpful insight- my tip would be to look more into their literature cited as those papers are legit legit and also related to the subject. Honestly utilizing sites that search peer-reviewed articles in general are super slept on for even generalist knowledge especially in the aquarium hobby if you know how/where to search for em and how to read them. 

I liked this project, and it turned out to be very useful for me too. Once I needed to do a similar one, and I used it as an inspiration and example. It's good that I have such a friend because he also recommended me some resources which I used for my own project. I always use a lot of different educational resources when I need to do something or write, and they help me out a lot. For example, some time ago I was stuck with writing, and this service https://edubirdie.com/essay-writing-help-online helped me out and saved me from missing the deadline. I like what I study but sometimes the tasks can be too hard for me, or I do have not enough time to do everything. So using os such help can be a good idea.

Had to SS and break this up because I couldn't get it to not go thru the schools firewall with login.

 

 

Wow, looks very informative and interesting. I'm just getting familiar with aquaculture and how everything works there, so I'll for sure find something interesting there. 

In 1.5 months I'm changing my apartment, and there I'll finally have space for a tank. And now I'll try to learn as much as possible, and I think this forum will help me.

 

Edited February 2 by mitchstevens